TidBITS#1130/18-Jun-2012
========================
Issue link:
Most of this week’s issue takes inspiration from one of two places —
Apple’s WWDC announcements and the impending demise of MobileMe. For
the former, Glenn Fleishman looks in detail at the IPv6 updates to
AirPort Utility and at the revised AirPort Express Base Station. Plus,
Adam Engst warns about installing the (now-pulled) Thunderbolt
Software Update 1.2, which caused boot failures for many users. On the
MobileMe side of things, Joe Kissell and Adam Engst gave a live
TidBITS Presents: Adieu MobileMe presentation last week that you can
now watch for free. Adam also looks at Sandvox 2.6, which extracts
content from iWeb-generated Web sites so you can more easily move away
from the obsolete iWeb. Rounding out the issue, we have guest articles
from Andrew Laurence about how Mac OS X 10.7.4 radically improves
WebDAV performance and from Steve McCabe on PDF support in current Web
browsers. Notable software releases this week include iMovie ’11
9.0.6, MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) Software Update 1.0, MacBook Air (Mid
2012) Software Update 1.0, MacBook Pro (Retina) Trackpad Update 1.0,
Java for OS X Lion 2012-004 and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 9,
Aperture 3.3, iPhoto ’11 9.3, and iTunes 10.6.3.
Articles
Thunderbolt Software Update 1.2 Causes Boot Failures
Watch Joe Kissell and Adam Engst in TidBITS Presents: Adieu MobileMe
Sandvox 2.6 Extracts iWeb Site Content
Mac OS X 10.7.4 Finally Fixes WebDAV (and iDisk)
Apple Restores IPv6 Support in AirPort Utility
AirPort Express Becomes Simultaneous Dual-Band Hockey Puck
Wrangling PDFs in 2012’s Web Browsers
TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 18 June 2012
ExtraBITS for 18 June 2012
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Thunderbolt Software Update 1.2 Causes Boot Failures
----------------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst: , @adamengst
article link:
56 comments
Apple last week released Thunderbolt Software Update 1.2, with the
single comment that it “Adds support for the Apple Thunderbolt to
Gigabit Ethernet Adapter.” Although it’s unclear if all
Thunderbolt-equipped Macs were affected, a number of people reported
that installing the update caused a variety of strange boot-related
problems (kernel panics, getting stuck at the gray boot screen,
“Unexpected error” messages, and more). Regardless of the
details, in each case, it seems that the Mac is rendered unusable,
even thunderstruck. I’ve now heard from some people for whom the
update did not cause any problems, but it’s still unclear what the
difference may be between those who are and are not suffering boot
failures. At press time, Apple had pulled the update and not yet
offered an alternative.
In all the reports I’ve seen, reinstalling Lion fixes the problem.
Boot into Recovery Mode by restarting while holding down Command-R.
Once booted from Lion’s hidden Recovery HD volume, you can select
Reinstall Mac OS X (if there is no Recovery HD volume, or it’s
damaged, most Mac models introduced since 2010 support Lion Internet
Recovery, which enables them to download a new Recovery HD image and
boot from that). Of course, redownloading Lion from the Mac App
Store will take quite some time, depending on the speed of your
Internet connection. Once you have reinstalled Lion, you’ll need
to run Software Update to bring everything up to date, all while
avoiding the Thunderbolt Software Update 1.2, of course.
If you happen to have a second Mac available, you can also
reportedly recover by reinstalling just the Mac OS X 10.7.4 Combo
Update. To do this, connect the thunderstruck Mac to your working
Mac via FireWire or Thunderbolt and restart the thunderstruck Mac
while holding down the T key to put it into Target Disk Mode. Then,
start the update, and select the thunderstruck Mac’s boot drive at
the appropriate point in the installer. For more troubleshooting
techniques and recovery details, see “Take Control of
Troubleshooting Your Mac, Second Edition.”
It’s likely that an update will appear soon; either way, unless
you absolutely need that Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
(which works only with the MacBook Air with Thunderbolt and the
just-released MacBook Pro with Retina Display anyway), there’s no
reason to install this update — assuming it’s still somehow
available to you — until we’ve seen a fix.
Thanks to alert reader Tom Barry for the heads-up!
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Watch Joe Kissell and Adam Engst in TidBITS Presents: Adieu MobileMe
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by Adam C. Engst: , @adamengst
article link:
12 comments
Our first TidBITS Presents event on 16 June 2012 was a success, with
over 200 people joining Joe Kissell and me live via Google+ Hangouts
On Air. Joe did a stellar job with his presentation, as I knew he
would, and the attendees contributed lots of great questions and
comments via Google+ and Twitter (where we congregated using the
#tbpresents hashtag).
Part of the attraction of Google+ Hangouts On Air is that the video
is automatically recorded to YouTube (and our buddy Mike T. Rose of
TUAW told us it was even live on YouTube _during_ the event). So,
even if you couldn’t make the live presentation, if you want to
learn about your transition options before MobileMe sunsets on 30
June 2012, you can watch TidBITS Presents: Adieu MobileMe on YouTube
at your leisure. The added beauty of having it on YouTube is that
you can also watch on an iPad in a comfy chair, on the big screen
connected to an Apple TV, or while you’re killing time on an
iPhone or iPod touch.
Please do leave us comments (at the bottom of this article, in the
Google+ post, or on YouTube) about both the content of the
presentation and (if you watched it live) your technical experience,
since we heard from some people during the event that the video was
either nonexistent or very choppy. We’re still trying to determine
just how well Hangouts On Air works for viewers in different
situations.
Thanks for watching, and we hope you find the content useful!
Oh, one last thing. Joe mentions a number of services and products
and articles in the presentation — here’s a list so you don’t
have to hunt them all down manually or take notes while watching.
**iDisk Replacements (storage, syncing, sharing)**
* Dropbox
* MacMate
* SpiderOak
* SugarSync
**iDisk Replacements (Web hosting)**
* Macworld: “Switch your iWeb site to a Mac-friendly Web host”
* 1&1 Web hosting
* Dreamhost
* MacMate
**Gallery Replacements**
* Dropbox
* Flickr
* Facebook
* Picasa Web Albums
* ZangZing
* iPhoto for iOS
**Other Products, Services, and Articles**
* Manage Apple IDs
* TidBITS: “Keep Your MobileMe Email Address without iCloud”
* BusyCal
* TidBITS: “iCal in Snow Leopard Can Participate in iCloud”
* Move your MobileMe email account without iCloud
* Mail2Web (Exchange hosting)
* Fruux
* Keychain2Go
* “Take Control of iCloud”
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Sandvox 2.6 Extracts iWeb Site Content
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by Adam C. Engst: , @adamengst
article link:
1 comment
While the most important aspect of MobileMe going dark for iWeb
users is getting your site hosted somewhere else, it’s clear that
iWeb itself is hanging on by only a thread as well. So the need to
move your iWeb-based Web site somewhere else is a good excuse to get
away from iWeb too, and to make that easier, Karelia Software has
just updated their Web site authoring tool, Sandvox.
I won’t get into Sandvox’s features in detail, but suffice to
say, while it predates iWeb, it’s now designed to do everything
iWeb can do and more. (Karelia has had the dubious distinction of
being stepped on by Apple not once, but twice, first with Sherlock 3
appearing to compete with their Internet search tool Watson and then
with iWeb competing with Sandvox.) Sandvox offers a drag-and-drop
interface for creating entire Web sites — complete with blogs,
picture galleries, social media integration, and more — all
without coding in HTML. Once you’ve designed your site, Sandvox
generates it using HTML5, and makes sure the code is compatible with
all major browsers on the Mac and PC, and with mobile devices.
What’s new in Sandvox 2.6 is the capability to extract content
from existing iWeb sites. Note that Karelia is careful to avoid the
term “import” since Sandvox cannot — technically or legally — import
iWeb sites. (Technically it’s hard because iWeb does some funky
stuff with the HTML code, and legally it’s impossible because iWeb
templates are copyrighted by Apple.)
Instead, when you point Sandvox at an iWeb-generated site, Sandvox
crawls the entire site, extracting good-sized chunks of text and
large graphics and adding them to a new Sandvox document. (You can
even watch it doing this, which is pretty cool.) It will not create
a site that looks like your existing iWeb site, but the same basic
structure and content should be present for you to manipulate,
tweak, and even improve within Sandvox. Karelia has posted a
detailed, FAQ-based guide to transitioning an iWeb site that should
explain exactly what you can expect. (As a dirty little secret,
Sandvox can extract content in this way from any site, but it’s
tweaked to work best with iWeb-created sites.)
Much as I know being forced to make transitions like this is a pain,
I think this one is worth looking at a little differently. Web
design is an ever-evolving art, and if you created a site in iWeb a
few years ago, when Apple was still maintaining the program, it’s
a few years out of date. Sandvox has been updated that entire time,
so by refactoring your site in Sandvox, you’ll get not only the
advantage of working with a modern, more-capable tool, you’ll get
a site redesign in the process. (We run into this every few years
ourselves. We’re in the middle of a major site redesign for Take
Control, and once that’s done, we’ll probably be turning our
attention to TidBITS too, since what we did a few years back
doesn’t have that fresh feel any more.)
Sandvox 2.6 works in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and later, and has
been localized to French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish,
Brazilian Portuguese, and Simplified Chinese. (The Japanese
localization is also new in 2.6.) It costs $79.99 for a single copy,
or $119.99 for a household, with site licenses running $39.99 per
seat. A free trial version is available. Although Sandvox is
available in the Mac App Store, I recommend you buy directly from
Karelia so the company keeps more of the revenue and can more easily
provide you with support, should you need help.
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Mac OS X 10.7.4 Finally Fixes WebDAV (and iDisk)
------------------------------------------------
by Andrew Laurence:
article link:
Friends, Mac users, naysayers, I come not to bury iDisk, but to
praise it.
Praise iDisk? Really? Now?
If you have updated to Mac OS X 10.7.4, give iDisk another try. It
is leaps and bounds faster than before. One might even call it
usable. And it will remain so until… MobileMe’s sunset on 30
June 2012.
What? Apple finally fixed iDisk now? On the eve of its demise?
Indeed. A small but significant item appeared in the 10.7.4 release
notes: “Improve performance when connecting to a WebDAV server.”
This update is great news for WebDAV users, but bittersweet for the
millions of people who cursed iDisk over the years.
Introduced as part of Apple’s “beyond the box” iTools at the
2000 Macworld Expo (see “Jobs’s Macworld Keynote Unveils
Mac-Centric Internet Services,” 5 January 2000), iDisk has been
almost universally derided. While iPhoto and iWeb turned publishing
of photos and pages on the Internet into single-beer tasks, iDisk
confounded users with frustratingly slow performance. Additional
services, such as Backup and Sharing, were layered on over the
years, but the performance issues remained. The Finder was prone to
spinlock if an iDisk was mounted, and its read and write speeds left
one pondering sneakernet fondly.
Apple’s support document, “iDisk Performs Slowly” attempted to
document and elucidate the reasons why iDisk might be slow. While
this document was welcome, iDisk just suffered in silence, largely
ignored by users and (apparently) Apple alike. Even worse, services
such as Dropbox demonstrated that cloud-based storage could work
very, very well.
With this in mind, you might be wondering, Fair Reader, how it is
that I come to praise iDisk. There’s the rub: the fault was never
in iDisk’s cloud storage service. Nay, the fault was in Apple’s
client software.
Apple didn’t talk about it much, but iDisk is an implementation of
the WebDAV protocol. WebDAV is, to quote its creators, “a set of
extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to
collaboratively edit and manage files on remote Web servers.” Put
simply, any WebDAV client can connect to any WebDAV server and treat
it like a run-of-the-mill file server. Many Web servers run the DAV
extensions, and many authoring tools (such as Dreamweaver and Coda)
can access and update files on those servers.
When you choose iDisk from the Finder’s Go menu, the Finder
leverages mount_webdav and webdavfs to mount the iDisk resource as a
disk volume. The Finder has thus functioned as a WebDAV client since
Mac OS X 10.0; it has also been able to mount non-iDisk WebDAV
resources. Where I work in higher education, this capability has
been relied on for years as a mechanism for providing
standards-based, centrally managed file services. Universities use a
variety of software systems to provide these services, but for years
our Mac users have either suffered or sought solace from third party
clients such as Cyberduck, Transmit, and Interarchy. (Windows and
Linux users relied on those systems’ built-in tools.)
In early 2011, my colleague Ian Crew at UC Berkeley sought to
rectify the matter. He wrote an incredibly detailed analysis of the
Finder’s WebDAV usage, including packet counts, protocol metrics,
and speeds, and filed a high-level support ticket with Apple. Others
(including myself) had filed bugs against the Finder’s WebDAV
client in the past, but for reasons known only to Apple, Ian’s
ticket got attention. Ideas and analysis were passed back and forth,
benchmarks were performed, and ultimately Apple coded changes into
the WebDAV client. According to Ian’s writeup, these changes
improve WebDAV performance by about two-and-a-half times, and make
WebDAV clients more reliable and stable. Ultimately, the changes
were issued in the Mac OS X 10.7.4 update.
So rejoice, iDisk users! Until 30 June 2012 you can enjoy iDisk with
the speed and responsiveness we’d always hoped it would provide.
iDisk took a bad rap for performance; it’s a pity that the fault
lay with the Mac’s client implementation. At least everyone else
using WebDAV will now reap the benefits of Ian Crew’s efforts.
[Andrew Laurence is a server administrator at the University of
California, Irvine.]
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Apple Restores IPv6 Support in AirPort Utility
----------------------------------------------
by Glenn Fleishman: , @glennf
article link:
12 comments
IPv6 has returned to AirPort Utility by popular demand, a reversal
of its removal in the recently released version 6.0. The
next-generation addressing system for the Internet, which replaces
the empty pool of familiar IPv4 numbers (of the pattern
192.168.0.1), is required for the Internet to continue functioning.
ISPs, network hardware providers, content sites, search engines, and
groups that form the backbone of the Internet’s infrastructure
policy groups are all agreed.
The Internet Society (the folks behind the IETF and RFCs) even drew
a worldwide line in the sand on 6 June 2012, not just to test IPv6
in a widespread fashion, as in previous years, but also to keep
everything active from that point on and continue to expand the use
of IPv6 for ordinary users, who shouldn’t have to sweat the
details.
IPv6 is necessary because IPv4 simply doesn’t have enough
addresses to encompass the many billions of devices that require
Internet access — and that’s just today. In the future, every
mote of smart dust might need an IP address. While NAT (Network
Address Translation) enabled IPv4 to limp along for years, aided by
a number of other behind-the-scenes tricks, IPv6’s vastly larger
set of possible addresses (3.4 x 10^38) is the only real solution.
It has been over a decade since IPv6 became standardized, but 2012
is the year in which IPv6 has finally hit the flashpoint for
adoption: IPv4 addresses are essentially exhausted (trading is still
going on) and IPv6 infrastructure is ready but needs real-world
commitment to bring about full operational equality with IPv4. Even
if things break a little, IPv6 must be pushed forward. (The reason
it has taken so long? There’s no financial reward, only a cost, in
switching. It’s inevitable, but that money has to come out of
somebody’s budget in every organization.)
That’s why it was so strange that Apple dropped IPv6 support in
the housecleaning that resulted in AirPort Utility 6.0; the AirPort
Utility iOS app never had it. While many of the features removed
from AirPort Utility 6.0 impacted only network administrators, very
few of whom use Apple Wi-Fi gear any more, IPv6 has a broader
impact. Apple built it into Mac OS X years ago, and it has been
fully supported in iOS from the start. Removing IPv6 support in
AirPort Utility meant that broadband modems plugged into newly
configured AirPort base stations couldn’t hand off IPv6
information to the base station nor to other devices on the same
network. That’s a problem. (See “AirPort Utility 6.0 Adds iCloud
Support but Removes Many Features,” 1 February 2012, for more
details about the iOS app and the 6.0 changes.)
But IPv6 is back! On the heels of many WWDC announcements, including
a quiet overhaul of the AirPort Express Base Station (see “AirPort
Express Turned into Simultaneous Dual-Band Hockey Puck,” 11 June
2012), Apple released updated Mac OS X and iOS versions of AirPort
Utility. The primary reason was to add support for simultaneous
dual-band networking in the new AirPort Express, which appeared in
AirPort Utility 5.6.1 for 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.5 Leopard. (All
5.x versions of AirPort Utility include IPv6 configuration, and 5.x
versions continue to work with all released AirPort base stations
starting with 2003 models.)
[An aside here, since AirPort Utility’s version support seems
confused in the 5.5 and 5.6 releases. In June 2011, Apple released
AirPort Utility 5.5.3 for 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.5 Leopard. This
version continued to work under 10.7 Lion. Then on 30 January 2012,
Apple released AirPort Utility 5.6 for Mac OS X 10.7.2 Lion,
alongside AirPort Utility 6.0, which was also only for Lion. Fair
enough. But the new AirPort Utility 5.6.1 no longer lists support
for Lion, showing only 10.5.7 to 10.6.8 as supported versions.
It’s confusing as all get out. If this is accurate, then Lion
users must download AirPort Utility 5.6.0 to configure now-missing
options on existing AirPort base stations, and if you’re running
Lion and get a new AirPort Express, which requires either AirPort
Utility 6.1 or 5.6.1, those options removed in AirPort Utility 6.0
are just inaccessible.]
The updated AirPort Utility 6.1 for Lion and the revised AirPort
Utility for iOS include support for the new AirPort Express, along
with an Internet Options button added to the Internet view. The main
Internet view now lets you enter IPv6-based DNS servers, necessary
for resolving domain names to IPv6 addresses.
The Internet Options dialog includes a Configure IPv6 pop-up menu
that lets you choose from Link-Local Only (use only on local
network), Automatically (pick up via DHCP from the broadband
connection, like an IPv4 address), or Manually (requires specific
address entry).
For all but Link-Local Only, you can select Native or Tunnel, which
refers to how the IPv6 connection is made. A native connection
provides IPv6 service to all devices on the network; a tunneled
connection encapsulates IPv6 traffic at the router and wraps it up
to carry across an IPv4 segment of the network to reach a fully
native IPv6 backbone. That’s a little technical, I know, but it
might help you talk to your ISP or other service provider when
trying to enable IPv6.
IPv6 isn’t the most exciting technology in the world. If you’re
not involved in Internet infrastructure or IT, it’s like listening
to sewer engineers talk about the kind of plastic used in outflow
pipes. But IPv6 is a necessary part of making sure the Internet
continues to work. The bits must flow!
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AirPort Express Becomes Simultaneous Dual-Band Hockey Puck
----------------------------------------------------------
by Glenn Fleishman: , @glennf
article link:
7 comments
On the heels of a rash of WWDC announcements, Apple quietly slipped
out a major revision to the AirPort Express Base Station that
dramatically improves its usefulness while leaving the price at $99.
The new model brings simultaneous dual-band support to the device,
and shrinks it to precisely the same size as an Apple TV: 3.9 inches
(98mm) square by 0.9 inches (23mm) tall. (The Apple TV is a bit
heavier.) Apple is clearly engaging in some benefits of scale by
switching its power adapter-like AirPort Express case design with
one that is identical to the Apple TV. They’ll stack and pair
nicely. There’s one difference: The Apple TV is black and the
AirPort Express (like all Apple Wi-Fi devices) is white.
The new model also finally has two Ethernet ports: one for a wide
area network (WAN) and the other for a local area network (LAN),
replacing the single dual-purpose jack in the previous models. The
Ethernet ports are both only 10/100 Mbps, about which I have
reservations, discussed later in the article.
(Before you ask, I won’t need to do an extensive update to the
“Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort Network, Third Edition”
that we just revised to cover AirPort Utility 6.0 and AirPort
Utility for iOS; see “‘Take Control of Your 802.11n AirPort
Network’ Updated,” 24 May 2012. All the advice that applies to
an AirPort Extreme, except for attaching peripherals via USB, now
applies to the AirPort Express as well.)
**AirPort History** -- Apple originally introduced the AirPort Express
in 2003 as a cheaper, portable alternative and extension to the
AirPort Extreme Base Station. The AirPort Extreme could support
dozens of simultaneous users and boasted good range. The AirPort
Express was rated for just 10 users, and was compact enough to
travel with, but the range at which it worked was substantially more
restricted than the AirPort Extreme. You could attach it to a power
outlet directly with a flip-out plug, or buy a $39 audio/extender
kit that let you attach a lengthy electrical cord.
However, the AirPort Express had three unique features. First, it
had (and still has) an audio output jack with both analog and
digital optical (TOSLINK) capability. The audio jack streams music
from iTunes using what was once called AirTunes (for audio only),
and now is part of AirPlay (which handles audio and video). Second,
the AirPort Express sported a USB port into which you could plug a
single printer to share across a local network. A third, less
well-known and less-used feature was an option to make the AirPort
Express act like a Wi-Fi adapter to extend a network just for
Ethernet and audio streaming. That appears to have been removed in
AirPort Utility 6.0.
In 2007, the AirPort Extreme gained 802.11n support, the latest
flavor in a series of Wi-Fi updates; a year later, the Time Capsule
debuted with 802.11n as well. Both could use either the 2.4 GHz or
the less-used 5 GHz band with 802.11n, which supports both frequency
ranges, but switching between bands required restarting the base
station. Both also included USB from the start, with the option to
attach a hard drive or printer, or to connect a USB hub and then
plug in multiple drives and printers. In 2008, Apple updated the
AirPort Express to support single-band 802.11n, but left the USB
limit of a single printer in place.
In 2009, the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule received another big
boost: simultaneous dual-band support. You no longer needed to
choose a band nor buy multiple base stations to support older
devices that could use only 802.11b or 802.11g in 2.4 GHz, or newer
devices, like all iPhone and iPod touch models, that support only
2.4 GHz for 802.11n. (All iPad models and all Macs released since
2006 can work over either band.)
The AirPort Express languished. At $99, it was cheaper than the $179
AirPort Extreme and the Time Capsule (priced at $299 and $499,
depending on drive capacity, even as the two drive sizes have been
upgraded twice since introduction). But it still had a niche because
of its compact size and audio output capabilities, as well as being
able to extend Wi-Fi to hard-to-reach nooks in a house or office. I
receive questions from TidBITS readers and owners of my Take Control
book nearly every week about how to use the AirPort Express to
extend networks and stream audio.
**Back to the Present** -- This update brings two changes beyond the
radio improvement. First, the switch to two Ethernet ports, one for
WAN and one for LAN, enables you to use the AirPort Express as your
sole base station on a mixed Ethernet/Wi-Fi network. Second, having
a flat, compact external power cord, instead of an integral one
(unless you bought a kit, discontinued last year) makes it much
simpler to position an AirPort Express at home or while traveling.
My sole gripe with the revised AirPort Express is its continued use
of 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, even though it now has separate ports for
WAN and LAN. This outdated standard is also found on the Apple TV,
where it makes sense, as one doesn’t need anything like 100 Mbps
to stream video to the device. But on a router, it’s a little
frustrating.
Ostensibly, and this is testable, Apple hasn’t limited speed for
intra-wireless connections. That is, one should be able to use the
full raw 75 Mbps and 300 Mbps bandwidth in 2.4 and 5 GHz among
devices using either band (true throughput is closer to 30–40 Mbps
and 100–150 Mbps, respectively). Likewise, you can plug an
inexpensive gigabit Ethernet switch into the AirPort Express’s LAN
port and have full gigabit throughput available among wired devices.
The limit affects only those rare people who enjoy greater than 100
Mbps throughput to the Internet and those who use the
wireless-to-Ethernet crossover, where you are transferring lots of
data regularly between wired Ethernet and wireless Wi-Fi devices.
Even without testing the updated unit, I am sure it will be a big
hit for folks for whom $179 seemed too high, and who were thinking
about purchasing a less-expensive router from another maker, or who
want to buy and set up an inexpensive, hassle-free AirPort base
station for friends or relatives. This Ethernet port improvement and
effective price drop make it affordable to stay in the Apple fold
for ease of setup and configuration, plus full support for all
things Apple.
I can envision a future merger of the Apple TV and AirPort Express
by way of adding an HDMI port to the AirPort Express and relying on
an A5 processor to handle video streaming and wireless routing at
the same time. They both use the same form factor and connect to
consumer electronics devices; a merger is as logical as the Time
Capsule’s combination of backup drive and base station.
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Wrangling PDFs in 2012’s Web Browsers
-------------------------------------
by Steve McCabe:
article link:
15 comments
Portable Document Format (PDF) — first launched by Adobe in 1993
and now an open ISO standard — has long been the de facto standard
for documents shared via the Web. Thanks to the free Adobe Reader
application and Apple’s inclusion of Preview in Mac OS X, anyone
who happens across a PDF on a Web site can open it. But what if you
just want to read the PDF quickly like any other Web page and move
on, without having to download it, open it in Preview or Adobe
Reader, and deal with the file in your Downloads folder later?
The Mac enjoys Web-based PDF support out of the box; Safari has
natively rendered PDFs for many years. Chrome, Google’s
increasingly popular Web browser, also now includes native support
for PDF. But Firefox, the last of the big three Mac browsers, has
long struggled to display PDFs, forcing users to download PDF files
and read them in Preview or Adobe Reader. At various times, an
assortment of plug-ins have enabled Firefox to display PDFs
internally, but many of those have come and gone, leaving Firefox
users confused as to the options.
This status quo has been shaken up with the arrival of Adobe Reader
10.1.3, Adobe’s free application-and-browser-plug-in bundle.
However, installing the Adobe Reader PDF plug-in can affect browser
behaviour in various ways. It’s time, then, for an overview of
what you can do with PDFs in your browser of choice, what you
can’t do, and what you might want to figure out how to do.
**Safari** -- Apple’s Safari has long sported the capability to
display PDF files as though they were just another Web page —
click a link ending in .pdf and the linked file appears within the
existing browser window, with no additional configuration required.
If you want to save the PDF to your hard disk, you have a few
options:
* If you know that a link leads to a PDF you want to download,
Control-click the link and choose one of the Save As items from the
contextual menu.
* For a faster approach, Option-click the link leading to the PDF to
download the file instantly to your Downloads folder.
* If you have already loaded the PDF into a Safari window, you can
Control-click anywhere on the PDF and choose Open in Preview, choose
File > Save As, or click the Download button that appears at the
bottom of the screen. (Those controls tend to disappear; if you
don’t see them, move the mouse pointer to the bottom center of the
screen.)
There is another, more permanent, way of forcing Safari to download
PDFs; if you would like downloading to be Safari’s default method,
you’ll need to resort to the command line. Quit Safari, and then,
in Terminal, copy and paste this line and press Return:
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool YES
The drawback to this approach is that it disables inline rendering
totally. To get it back, use this command in Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitOmitPDFSupport -bool NO
Once you’re viewing a PDF in Safari, you have only a few options
available by Control-clicking anywhere in Safari’s window. You can
select and copy text, and you can zoom in and out. You can also
change the page display to show one or two pages, either at a time
or continuously scrolling. Searching works, and internal links and
Web links are hot, but Safari cannot show any bookmarks. And, of
course, you can print the PDF using File > Print.
**Chrome** -- Chrome’s PDF handling closely resembles Safari’s;
the inline PDF renderer is enabled by default, and you can save PDF
links to disk either from a contextual menu or by Option-clicking
the link. Once a PDF is loaded in a Chrome window, you can save it
either from another contextual menu or by clicking the floppy disk
icon that appears in the lower right corner of the window whenever
you move the pointer in that general location.
Unlike Safari, though, the option to disable inline rendering
entirely is easily accessible — type chrome://plugins/ into
Chrome’s address bar and hit Return, and a list of plug-ins is
displayed. Then, simply click the Disable link under “Chrome PDF
Viewer” and Chrome will treat .pdf links as files to be
downloaded, rather than pages to be displayed. In a further
improvement over Safari, no restart is required in order to toggle
between the two.
As with Safari, there aren’t many things you can do with a PDF in
Chrome. You can zoom in and out, select and copy text, print the
PDF, search for text, and, unusually, rotate the view. Internal and
external links work, but again, no bookmarks are shown.
**Firefox** -- Firefox does things differently. The good people at the
Mozilla Foundation have clearly decided that native PDF support
isn’t necessary — clicking a link to a PDF file displays a
dialog asking “What should Firefox do with this file?” Firefox
can either open the file in Preview (or whatever your default PDF
program may be), or it can save the file to disk. But what it
can’t do is display the file in a browser window.
In the past, various plug-ins have enabled PDF browsing in Firefox,
but have either suffered from inelegant interfaces or have failed to
maintain compatibility with Firefox updates.
The compatibility of Schubert|it’s PDF Browser Plugin has waxed
and waned over the years; it currently seems to work in Firefox 12,
but even when it works, it’s quite minimal, lacking even text
selection, a surprising omission in a plug-in that costs $69 for
commercial use; it’s free for personal and educational use.
(Interestingly, Schubert|it’s PDF Browser Plugin can also take
over PDF rendering for both Safari and Chrome, though it’s unclear
why anyone would want that, since it’s slower and generally less
capable.)
Nitro PDF Software’s PDF Download talks a good game, offering
options to save, open inline or open as HTML any .pdf link, but
fails to deliver — the HTML option produces a page that bears only
a passing similarity to the original document, while the
“inline” option actually converts PDFs to images; the results
are both fuzzy and slow to appear. Clearly, something more robust is
required.
Last up is PDF Viewer, a Firefox add-on that, according to
Mozilla’s support site, “is a new revolutionary extension using
Web standard technologies that allows you to display within Firefox
almost all PDF files found on the Web without a plug-in.” What is
revolutionary here is not a browser’s capability to display PDF
files, but the fact that PDF Viewer relies on HTML5 and JavaScript
and isn’t a plug-in (not that users will notice the difference).
PDF Viewer appears to do a decent job of displaying PDF files, and
offers many of the same features as Safari and Chrome, including
text selection, zooming, and searching, along with a button to
download the PDF to disk. Most notably, though, it offers an
optional sidebar that can show either page thumbnails or PDF
bookmarks.
What it lacks is support for printing (you’ll want to download and
print from Preview instead). But its main flaw is that it is slow,
both to load documents initially and sometimes to display pages even
after loading. Short documents, such as a one-page flyer from my Web
site, load without grief; longer files such as Apple’s product
documentation come in rather slowly, but not unacceptably so. The
Mozilla support site does, to be fair, acknowledge that this plug-in
in still in beta.
**Adobe Reader: One Size Fits All?** -- In theory, Adobe Reader
10.1.3’s browser plug-in should provide a unified and consistent
style of interaction with PDFs across all three popular browsers.
Unfortunately, although the Adobe Reader plug-in works as advertised
in Safari, it doesn’t work at all in Chrome, and may or may not
work in Firefox.
Installing the Adobe Reader plug-in overrides Apple’s built-in PDF
rendering in Safari, and also disables the capability to switch off
inline PDF display in the Terminal. Fortunately, then, if you prefer
Safari’s built-in PDF capabilities, removing the plug-in is a
simple matter of deleting these two files (your admin password will
be required):
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/AdobePDFViewer.plugin
/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin
Adobe Reader’s plug-in interacts with Chrome rather oddly.
Chrome’s list of plug-ins shows that the Adobe Reader plug-in is
available, but if you disable Chrome’s own PDF renderer, enable
Adobe’s plug-in, and then attempt to view a PDF, your reward will
be a black screen with a small message saying “Can’t load
plug-in.” In short, the Adobe Reader plug-in simply does nothing
for Chrome users.
And so we return to Firefox, which, in its usual quirky and
unpredictable style, works well with the Adobe Reader plug-in,
except when it doesn’t. In earlier versions of Firefox, including
version 3, the Adobe Reader plug-in worked well. The combination of
Firefox 12 and Adobe Reader 10.1.3, however, has a major flaw that
causes Firefox to display nothing but a blank screen when you click
a .pdf link. This bug, according to a blog post on Mozilla’s Web
site, affects most users; as if that weren’t enough, it can also
cause crashes in Macs running in 32-bit mode. In my testing, on a
recent MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.7.3 Lion, I spent a lot of
time staring at blank pages, without managing a single successful
PDF display or experiencing a single crash. Adam Engst, however,
clearly has powers I do not possess; Firefox, he tells me, quite
elegantly displayed inline PDFs on his 2008 Mac Pro running Mac OS X
10.6.8 Snow Leopard.
This odd level of compatibility is a shame, since while the Adobe
Reader plug-in feels slower (particularly on load) than the built-in
options in Safari and Chrome, it offers more capabilities. A click
on the swirly-A logo in Adobe Reader’s floating toolbar reveals
roughly the same controls as are in the full Adobe Reader
application, with a sidebar showing page thumbnails, bookmarks,
attachments, and search results. It’s easy to jump to specific
pages, and you’re provided with precise zoom options, along with
buttons to show the entire page and to zoom to the full width of the
page (Chrome offers similar shortcut buttons). You can also rotate
the document, view its document properties, and adjust page display
options. A right-hand sidebar provides access to tools for creating
and converting PDFs, but those require a paid account with Adobe,
and I was unable to get the signing and commenting tools also
available in that sidebar to work.
In the end, the Adobe Reader plug-in is a somewhat odd beast —
more capable than the built-in PDF renderers and Firefox’s PDF
Viewer, but slower and a bit clumsy due to the way it tries to
shoehorn all of Adobe Reader into a Web browser window. If you want
those features, you may be best off simply downloading the PDF and
working with it in the full Adobe Reader application.
**Recommendations** -- Since PDF is intended to be a unifying
technology, one which provides consistent layout behaviour across
platforms, it’s ironic that there is so little consistency between
browsers in their handling of online PDF files. Fortunately, this
translates to choices and options for the user. But what choices to
make?
For Chrome’s growing number of users, there is no choice —
you’ll be using its built-in renderer, though that’s not a
terrible thing. Firefox users, on a good day, have a little more
choice — PDF Viewer, despite occasional performance issues, is a
functional and useful PDF display tool. What PDF Viewer lacks in
features, it makes up for by actually working, which remains the
Achilles heel of the Adobe-Mozilla partnership, and so at the moment
PDF Viewer has to be the PDF renderer of choice for Firefox users.
Should Adobe correct this problem, a rethink might be in order, but
at time of writing I cannot recommend Adobe Reader under Firefox.
Which brings us neatly back to Safari, definitely the most
PDF-friendly browser of the three. Built-in support is strong, but
the capability to select (albeit in an inelegant manner) between
Apple’s and Adobe’s renderers is a bonus. For those who wish
only to view the occasional PDF on the Web and move on, Safari’s
built-in PDF renderer is fine, but for those who use PDF more
frequently, Adobe Reader comes out ahead on features. This is hardly
surprising given the extent to which Adobe Reader (and Acrobat Pro)
have always offered far more comprehensive support than Mac OS X’s
Preview for the format that Adobe itself created.
Now, if Adobe could just get the plug-in working in Chrome and
Firefox, it might be possible to make a unified recommendation.
(Thanks to Roger Cohen for additional information for this article.)
----
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TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 18 June 2012
------------------------------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff:
article link:
**iMovie ’11 9.0.6** -- Apple has released iMovie ’11 9.0.6, an
update largely devoted to upgrading the video editing app to handle
the resolution of the just-released MacBook Pro with Retina Display
(2880 by 1800 pixels, to be exact). Jeff Carlson notes on Twitter
that the size of the app has ballooned from 438 MB to over 1.2 GB
(though Apple’s support page has the download clocking in at 1.01
GB). Aside from display enhancements, the update also adds support
for Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak,
Thai, Turkish, and Ukrainian languages. Note that iMovie 9.0.6 now
requires Mac OS X 10.7.4 Lion — these changes aren’t available
to users running 10.6 Snow Leopard. ($14.99 new from the Mac App
Store, free update through Software Update or the Mac App Store,
1.08 GB via Software Update or 1.26 GB via Mac App Store)
Read/post comments about iMovie ’11 9.0.6.
**MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) Software Update 1.0** -- A day after
unveiling its updated slate of MacBook Pros, Apple released MacBook
Pro (Mid 2012) Software Update 1.0 for all the new models —
covering the 15.4-inch Retina Display version as well as both 13-
and 15-inch sizes of the non-Retina models (see “New MacBook Pro
Features Retina Display, Flash Memory,” 11 June 2012). Apple
states that the update improves graphics stability, external display
support, and USB 3.0 device support. (Free, 1.06 GB)
Read/post comments about MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) Software Update 1.0.
**MacBook Air (Mid 2012) Software Update 1.0** -- Apple has released
MacBook Air (Mid 2012) Software Update 1.0 for its just-released
refreshes of the MacBook Air line (see “MacBook Air Adds USB 3.0,
Faster Processors,” 11 June 2012). The update promises fixes that
improve graphics stability, flash memory performance, and external
display support. (Free, 1.06 GB)
Read/post comments about MacBook Air (Mid 2012) Software Update 1.0.
**MacBook Pro (Retina) Trackpad Update 1.0** -- Apple has quickly
issued MacBook Pro (Retina) Trackpad Update 1.0 for its
just-released MacBook Pro with Retina Display to address an issue
that affected the trackpad’s responsiveness (see “New MacBook
Pro Features Retina Display, Flash Memory,” 11 June 2012). The
updater will be installed into the Utilities folder within your
Applications folder, and will launch automatically. (Free, 1.26 MB)
Read/post comments about MacBook Pro (Retina) Trackpad Update 1.0.
**Java for OS X Lion 2012-004 and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 9** --
Promising improved security, Apple has released two Java updates:
Java for OS X Lion 2012-004 and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 9.
Both updates deactivate the Java plug-in if no applets have been
running for an extended time. However, you can re-enable use of Java
by clicking a region labeled “Inactive plug-in” on a Web page.
For Lion users, the update automatically disables the plug-in if the
previous update (Java for OS X Lion 2012-003) was not installed.
Both the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and 10.6 Snow Leopard releases also
update Java SE to version 1.6.0_33, which should protect Macs from
untrusted Java applets executing arbitrary code without being given
permission (according to Apple’s security overview). The updates
are available via Software Update and direct download, and Apple
reminds you to quit any Web browsers and Java applications before
installing either one. (Free, 64.07 MB and 76.34 MB)
Read/post comments about Java for OS X Lion 2012-004 and Java for
Mac OS X 10.6 Update 9.
**Aperture 3.3** -- With the release of Aperture 3.3, Apple ties its
professional photo organizer and editor more closely with iPhoto
’11 via a new unified library. You can now access the same images
in both Aperture and iPhoto without having to import and export
photos manually, and the two apps share Faces, Places, slideshows,
and albums. Aperture 3.3 is also optimized for the new MacBook Pro
with Retina Display (see “New MacBook Pro Features Retina Display,
Flash Memory,” 11 June 2012). The update also brings a number of
new features, including support for AVCHD video, Skin Tone and
Natural Gray modes added to the White Balance tool, an improved
Highlights & Shadows tool, and an Auto Enhance button added to the
Adjustments panel. The user interface has been tweaked, adding a new
manual option to customize the sort order in the Projects view via
drag-and-drop; displaying Facebook, Flickr, and MobileMe albums as
thumbnails when accounts are selected in the source list; and
modifying some terminology (“Original” instead of “Master”
and “Info” instead of “Metadata”). Note that Aperture 3.3
now requires Mac OS X 10.7.4 — these changes aren’t available to
users running 10.6 Snow Leopard. ($79.99 new in the Mac App Store,
free update, 528 MB)
Read/post comments about Aperture 3.3.
**iPhoto ’11 9.3** -- Apple has released iPhoto ’11 9.3, which
brings tighter integration between the consumer photo management app
and the more professionally geared Aperture via a new unified
library. In line with the latest release of Aperture (see
“Aperture 3.3,” 12 June 2012), you can now share libraries
between iPhoto and Aperture, thus sharing images, Faces, Places,
slideshows, and albums. The update also adds support for the AVCHD
video format, preserves keywords and titles in exported files with
embedded GPS location data, adds flagging capability when in Magnify
(1-up) view, and automatically expands the Description field as
needed when typing text. It also brings a new Export option that
enables you to organize exported photos into subfolders by event.
Note that iPhoto 9.3 now requires Mac OS X 10.7.4 — these changes
aren’t available to users running 10.6 Snow Leopard. For anyone
who may still be upgrading from iPhoto 5 or earlier, Apple also
released the iPhoto Library Upgrader tool, which also runs only in
Lion. ($14.99 new from the Mac App Store, free update through
Software Update or the Mac App Store, 630.4 MB via Software Update
or 599.65 MB via Apple’s support page)
Read/post comments about iPhoto ’11 9.3.
**iTunes 10.6.3** -- Apple has released iTunes 10.6.3, a maintenance
update that adds compatibility for the imminent public arrival of
Apple’s next major operating system (see “OS X 10.8 Mountain
Lion to Ship in July 2012,” 11 June 2012). It also fixes several
issues, including unexpected deletion of apps on a device as well as
playlists created on a device, photos syncing to a device in an
unexpected order, and an issue where iTunes became unresponsive when
syncing to an original iPad that contained an iBooks textbook.
(Free, 176.9 MB via Software Update)
Read/post comments about iTunes 10.6.3.
ExtraBITS for 18 June 2012
--------------------------
by TidBITS Staff:
article link:
There was undoubtedly more happening last week, but between WWDC
exhaustion and our TidBITS Presents: Adieu MobileMe event, this
piece at Macworld with Tim Cook promising a new professional Mac was
all that jumped out at us.
**Cook Promises New Professional Mac for 2013** -- In response to a
customer’s query about the underwhelming Mac Pro update released
last week (see “Mac Pro Gains Only Minor Speed Bump, Not
Thunderbolt or USB 3.0,” 11 June 2012), Apple CEO Tim Cook replied
by email that Apple is indeed working on a more substantial update
to the professional tower Mac. Cook writes, “Although we didn’t
have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today’s event,
don’t worry as we’re working on something really great for later
next year.” Macworld confirmed with Apple that the message was
indeed from Cook.
Read/post comments
$$
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